Naval Ravikant Periscope #2

After Naval’s incredible first Periscope chat, we knew we had to transcribe the second one for all to read. For those who prefer to watch the original recording, you can find it here on Periscope. It’s extremely insightful, and Naval’s voice makes it very relaxing to listen to.

We’ve taken all the questions asked and clustered them into the sections: Status and Wealth, Business and Entrepreneurship, Life and Society, Mindfulness, and Miscellaneous. Each of the sections will have the resources mentioned by Naval at the bottom. This Periscope had less external resources mentioned than the first, none the less, it’s an incredible read in itself.

(Tweet here) I’ve been thinking a lot about status versus wealth recently and the reason I’ve been thinking about status versus wealth is because I think deep down all of us want to be free… everybody wants to be free, nobody wants to be told what to do, or how to live their life, according to anybody else… and kind of the easiest path to the freedom [is] to get rid of a certain set of troubles… to get rid of the money problems is money.

So even though most people will say they’re above it or they don’t need it or it’s not part of happiness… I don’t think the world would be a worse place if we made everybody richer… and I don’t mean in the sense that we double the money in their bank accounts that’s just a nominal thing but I mean like a real thing… like if everybody had a nicer house and we could make it environmentally conscious, and everybody had a nicer car and we could make an electric car, and everybody had enough food on the table, everybody had reliable high-quality internet and bandwidth. Whatever they had, if they had 2X of it, the world would be a better place. I don’t think the world would be a worse place. So I think overall making everybody richer… and I don’t even [mean] socialism I’m not talking about redistribution, I’m just saying everybody richer would be a good thing and wealth is a positive sum game.

That was a no-brainer a couple of years ago. I think even today, if you are in the tech industry and you want to create something then it is probably still the best place to go to. That said, the emergence of the blockchain revolution, ICOs, internet, plus much better video conferencing tools, slack, and sort of this permanent nomadic class of tech travelers, I think makes it possible now to do startups from more locations and to be in the tech industry from more locations than just Silicon Valley. But I’m still waiting to see the full flattening, that might take decades or more.

Do you follow the schedule to maximize time like Ben Franklin?21:20

No, I am incredibly unscheduled. I do not like schedules. I want to stay as free as possible. My only schedule is my daily morning workout and even that I’m not perfect. Other than that, I try to be as unscheduled as possible because I want to be free.

1 Curated Resources

Happiness is such an overloaded word. I’m not even sure [what] it means. I think that peace and purpose kind of don’t go together. For me, these days, happiness is more about peace then it’s about joy. So in that sense, I think a purpose can be a little misleading. If it’s your internal purpose, if it’s your moment to moment: that’s what you most want to do, then sure you’ll be happy doing it. But if it’s sort of this externally inflicted purpose – society wants me to do X or you know I am the first son of the first son of this so I should do Y or I have this debt or burden that I took on then I don’t think that’s gonna make you happy.

Why are you doing this? 21:56

I was bored.

1 Curated Resources

It seems really difficult to follow. It makes sense that the brain and the body would have a backup mechanism, for example, the Ice Ages when humans evolved, there weren’t a lot of plants available… but at the same time you know we’ve been eating plants for thousands of years so I don’t agree with my good friend Zuko, and I don’t think plants are bad for you but something closer to the Paleo diet is probably correct.

Ketogenic just seems very artificial. It may have specific therapeutic benefits in certain circumstances. It’s always worth trying and it’s worth doing ketogenic just to see how the brain and the body processed sugar and fat… and I think the interplay between sugar [and] fat is really interesting. Fat is what makes you satiated, fat in your diet… so when you eat fatty foods that’s what makes you feel like oh I’m getting full… and the easiest way to do that is to go on a ketogenic diet where you’re eating like tons of bacon all the time are you gonna feel almost nauseous at the end where you don’t want to look at the fat anymore.

I don’t really have an opinion of Tether, I hope it’s real and not a scam.

Why are tokens inseparable from a blockchain? 3:06

Well, a public blockchain what it’s basically doing is assembling resources from anonymous distributed actors all over the world, and it’s basically making sure those resources are being provided and people can consume those resources. So it’s a governance network for distributed resources and somebody has to keep track of who’s providing the resources, who’s doing the work, and who’s consuming the resources… and so when you do that you essentially have a ledger entry of credits and debits and that automatically creates a currency. So in my mind, public blockchains do involve currencies. I’m sure there are exceptions but they’re probably very pathological.